Patch standalone esxi host to 6.0

With every new vmware esxi build you need to update your servers. It is very easy with Update Manager, but how to do it when there is standalone version of ESXi or one managed by vCenter server? It can be patched very easy way via CLI and using SSH. Today we will try such process with upgrade ESXi 5.5 to ESXi 6.0 in my home lab. In the future posts I will tell you about my home lab, but now lets start to upgrade standalone esxi server which is managed by vCenter living on this server. We need ESXi Offline Bundle (VMware-ESXi-6.0.0-2494585-depot.zip file) for that.

The ESXi Offline bundle is available for paying customers now, and it’s not known when users of free version of ESXi will be able to download it. There are two ways of upgrading the existing ESXi hosts. The hosts can be running ESXi Free Version or not. The offline bundle works for both.

Patch ESXi 5.5 to ESXi 6.0 by using VMware Offline Bundle

Patch ESXi 5.5 to ESXi 6.0 by using VMware Free Hypervisor ISO file.

First of all you nees to shut down all your Vms cause in both scenarios there is a downtime. So: